There were X-wings during that battle but they were escorting the transports off the planet.

Even though it was heavily panned I decided to watch the Dark Tower as I've still been quite keen to see it although unfortunately the reviews are correct and it's a truly awful film. Films based on books often fail because it's difficult to take the amount of content in a book and put it into a film but Dark Tower is even worse as it tries to take the bulk of all eight books and fit them into a single film. Unsurprisingly it makes for a confusing mess of a film which races along making little sense and then it ends, the world of the dark tower is slowly built up along the books to gradually introduce the concepts of the different worlds, how the dark tower is the centre of them all, the beams that secure all these worlds etc. That said I liked the film as an illustration of various concepts, locations and people within the books which they've done a superb job with as I immediately recognised most of it.

It's just a shame they made such a mess of the rest of it and I really can't understand what they were thinking, the core concept of the Dark Tower is the titular Dark Tower itself, the Man in Black and the Gunslinger.

We are outnumbered by enemy titans, recommend aggressive sustained counterfire

Although it got panned and the trailers looked awful I watched Ghost in the Shell and came away quite impressed with it, while it's a lot more shallow than the original and does admittedly largely omit the entire point of the original it does make up for it with some great visuals. They've done an incredibly good job producing live action versions of the animation in that you can immediately identify the scenes and components from the animated version but they look convincing and workable in the film. The general film doesn't feel that Japanese instead feeling like it's taking part in some futuristic city and Scarlett Johansson not being Japanese doesn't feel like much of an issue given her body is entirely synthetic and she's a bit of a misfit anyway.

We are outnumbered by enemy titans, recommend aggressive sustained counterfire

Anyone watched Alex Garland's Annihilation on Netflix? It's generated quite a few headlines as it was made for the cinema as normal but the director refused to change the film as requested after the film did poorly at test screenings so instead the agreement was made in some territories outside the US it wouldn't be shown at the cinema and instead straight to Netflix. I thought his previous film Ex Machina was pretty decent and was keen to see this one but came away pretty disappointed with it. Natalie Portman plays a biology teacher who is an ex-soldier and mourning the loss of her soldier husband who has been deployed but hasn't been in touch for six months which she assumes means he has passed away until he suddenly he appears back in her house with no idea how he got there or even what mission he was on. Just to avoid spoiling it...

Spoiler:

I thought the start of the film is good and initially the mystery of the shimmer is what keeps it going but as it progresses it feels like it's trying more to be a horror film rather than sci-fi, by the time it reached the end it felt like it had no answers and had just gone completely weird. I thought perhaps I'd missed something but on reading up it seems it's one of these films that leaves people to interpret as they want which I dislike.

If you ever wondered what a Scandinavian version of Taken would be like then look no further, In Order of Disappearance stars Stellan Skarsgård as a snow plough driver who decides to get revenge after he loses his son....it's as brilliant and as ridiculous as it sounds.

A local cinema was showing V for Vendetta which I unfortunately missed so was watching it at home instead and still one of my favourites even knowing exactly what's coming. One part that's always puzzled me though...

Spoiler:

late on the in the film Inspector Finch has mostly pieced together what's been happening and that the government were the one responsible for the virus outbreaks, he identifies three individuals that were a part of it two of who are dead but one, Rookwood appears to still be alive and Finch receives a message from him when his file has been opened. Finch meets with him and Rookwood confirms what Finch believes, the government had been working on testing drugs and produced a potent virus which they unleashed on the public to gain their support when they could offer the remedy for it. Later Finch discovers Rookwood is actually dead and it was V in disguise which Finch is furious about claiming that V fed him a lot of nonsense which had diverted them from hunting V.

I don't understand why Finch is so annoyed though, as V said at the start Finch already had the details but just needed the story and Finch has already come to the conclusion himself that it was the government behind it all which V confirmed.[spoiler]

I also watched Justice League which I thought wasn't bad, like the previous films it had some rubbish elements like the hopelessly generic bad guy but he's almost irrelevant to the film which is more focused on Bruce Wayne trying to fill the gap left by Superman. He already knows he's getting past it but also that the world needs a powerful symbol like Superman which motivates him to seek out other superheroes, the times it briefly dips more into that aspect were my favourite parts of the film but they're mostly few and far between. Plus [spoiler]Superman is just awful in as he's clearly a difficult character to work with anyway and the films really haven't handled him well, this time the film worked far better without him as he feels little more than a joke just coming in magically at the end and saving the day

We are outnumbered by enemy titans, recommend aggressive sustained counterfire

I noticed Luc Besson's Valerian was on Netflix and was curious to see if it was as bad as made out and wow, it really is bad. The two main cast are just awful individually and the fact they're supposed to be a romantic pair I genuinely thought was meant to be a running joke as they behave more like brother and sister. The film makes extensive use of CGI and green screening which really shows and it gives everything a very fake feel which isn't helped by the terrible acting. The plot is mostly fairly awful particularly at a pivotal point when one character refuses to do the 'right thing' because he's a soldier and has to take orders despite the fact just 30 seconds before he refused the direct orders of a Commander and punched him instead.

We are outnumbered by enemy titans, recommend aggressive sustained counterfire

I watched Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a few weeks ago and absolutely loved it. So good to see a film with decent characters and story instead of yet another superhero film. You really got a feel for a hick town in nowheresville USA. It was a bit like watching a more cheery Coen brothers film. Some great comic moments in it too.

Just watched Thor Ragnarok, that’s a stupid bit of fun, very enjoyable, I liked that it was closer to GOTG in tone. Quite regularly I think I’m burnt out on the whole super hero thing, and it annoys me that the market is so overly saturated with them, but they are just so watchable, almost to the point where they are the only films me and the missus can agree on watching.

Watched the new infinity wars. Definitely 5 out of 5 for fans. And 4 out of 5 for casuals! As a fan it was awesome! Amazing! Surprising and left me shattered! What a rollercoaster! People in the cinema were applauding parts of the film!

Thanos is yet another great MCU bad guy! They're getting very good at writing the bad guys!

You didn't like Hella or war monger?! They were both great bad guys albeit nerfed easily. Ultron was a bit crap as was the Spiderman baddie.

I loved thanos! I know what he's doing, why he's doing it, and that he's not as crazy as you think at the beginning. He's not just a purple thumb with a ray gun. Sure there's a mcguffin as all these things have! But sometimes it's nice to watch a big popcorn movie!

Totally appreciate this won't be a film for everyone! But for an MCU film fan, it has a hell of a lot of pay offs!

I thought Hela was an awful villain not for Cate Blanchett's role which I thought she did well but she really didn't have much to work with.Thor Ragnorok and other Marvel spoilers

Spoiler:

I did think Thor Ragnorok is a lot better than most of the recent MCU films but at the same time you could remove Hela from the film entirely or replace her with another villain and it wouldn't have changed it, she was just there to fulfill the villain role and binned at the end. She was just the usual generic villain who wanted to enslave everyone or something whereas the character had a lot of potential that was ignored as she is just straight out evil with little justification. Given Thor's at times impatience if she'd come in with a warmonger approach to the realms that could have been good but no, we need the usual Marvel black and white with Thor = good, Hela = evil.

It's the same with almost every Marvel villain and while we get occasional glimpses of something better with Winter Soldier (I really liked the idea of SHIELD overreaching itself, it was a shame they went with the Hydra cop out) and Civil War but on the whole the Marvel villains are frustratingly forgettable and generic hence why I assumed you must be being sarcastic because it's generally agreed Marvel can't really do villians. Although Dark Knight is regarded as the best of the Nolan Batman films for Heath Ledger's joker but I prefer Batman Begins for Liam Neeson's Ra's al Ghul because he's not just an evil bad guy instead he sees himself as the good guy and while I may not agree with his approach, you can see why he was doing it.

One of the main strengths of Star Trek Deep Space Nine particularly in the current climate is that it isn't black and white, good and evil - it starts off with Starfleet managing a space station for the Bajorans, who are finally free after a brutal occupation by the evil Cardassians. Over time it turns out that the Cardassians aren't all the evil people made out to be and on the Bajoran side, some of their activities under the occupation were extremely questionable. In the later series with the quadrant fully at war we find out the squeaky clean Starfleet has an illegal agency operating entirely outside the law for it and when it looks like Starfleet is going to lose the war and the casualties are mounting, Captain Sisko takes a very non-Starfleet approach to resolve it.

That said, at times there isn't a need for a villain even though every it seems mandatory for all Marvel films. Thor Ragnorok was a welcome change particularly because it mostly ignores the villain and after the awful X-men apocalypse and several rubbish Wolverine films I was surprised at how good Logan was, it was refreshing as it wasn't about the end of the world or galaxy or universe, it had a tiny ensemble and there was no big bad guy with his legion of CGI soldiers.

I do definitely feel superhero fatigue as Chris has mentioned, I never went to see Black Panther as it seemed hugely overhyped what appeared to be a pretty average film and I can't say I feel particularly excited about Infinity War although Josh Brolin does look absolutely awesome as Cable. I think I'm just bored of the MCU formula which they don't want to stray much from although there is a small glimmer of hope with Guardians of the Galaxy and Ragnorok both being successful and not following that formula

I have almost exactly the same issue with Warhammer 40K where also many of the stories are very shallow and repetitive with the heroic Space Marines fighting the evil bad guy of the day and also similarly they try to be better by upping the ante and increasing the scale but it just gets dull particularly as they can't spend much time developing the characters. Some of the best in the series are those that feature on a small number of characters they can develop and do what they want with who sometimes don't win at the end of the day.

We are outnumbered by enemy titans, recommend aggressive sustained counterfire

On the whole I thought they did pretty well with what was pretty much an impossible task to bring together so many different characters into one storyline but at the same time it suffers quite a bit for it as it simply can't give any time to any of the characters as it's quickly moving onto the next. I was pleased the CGI army shown in the trailer was a fairly minor part at the end (although would have been better without it) and instead the more one on one fights were great particularly the fight in Edinburgh and the reveal of Captain America. I liked the hints at the repercussions of Civil War which is also a shame they couldn't spend a little more time on although certainly when there's such a big threat it's understandable differences would be overlooked. Well apart from Ant Man and Hawkeye which was a funny excuse but can't say I missed Hawkeye.

The spirit stones and Thanos cause a big problem as there's not much that can be done with them particularly Thanos so those fights are pointless they're never going to be won by the heroes. It was definitely good to see the spirit stones actually being used properly as in most cases they've just been a shiny plot point everyone wants. That said I was surprised the heroes never used the spirit stones as I thought that was going to be how Thanos would be slowed since he'd have to counter the power of the spirit stone he was trying to get but bizarrely everyone pretty much just hands them over. I don't really understand Vision either who never seems to really be able to make much use of his spirit stone.

Thor Ragnorok has been one of my favourite Marvel films and it was frustrating to see it's been forgotten already, the whole point of the film was that Thor didn't need the hammer as the power was within him. It's one of my favourite parts in the film where he's being beaten by Hela and tells his vision of Odin that he's powerless without the hammer to which he's told is he the God of hammers? In Infinity war though he's back to an older version where he's worthless without his weapon and needs it back to be any use, even then he just fires off a few waves from the weapon.

Josh Brolin did a very good job bringing some depth to Thanos and he came across a lot better than the shallow CGI villain he looked like he might be. However his plan made absolutely no sense at all and I was amused today to read an article explaining based on the economics and productivity after WW2 that just removing half a population would likely significantly damage it even with more resources. The ending really had no impact either as we know fine that it's not final and those people aren't really dead which in turn spoiled the fact the bad guy won because we know he hasn't.

Overall though while it was well done it just felt very predictable particularly after so many superhero films, I've come to appreciate the ones that try to do something different like Logan, Thor 3 and Civil War.

We are outnumbered by enemy titans, recommend aggressive sustained counterfire

I went to see Solo last Thursday and couldn’t make my mind up about it. The first 30 odd minutes felt rushed and lacked any kind of depth. I didn’t really care for the character and the actor chosen was a bit bland. As for the bad guy, all I could think of was the Chaucer character he played in A Knight’s Tale.

Infinity war is better if you think of it as a thanos heist movie. Then you;re not worried about why your favourite hero isnt in most of the film.

Downloaded a moody copy of deadpool 2. i've seen so many bloody spoilers on youtube suggested video thumbnails and things i may as well just watch the damn thing before the memes start coming out and ruining more of it!

Annoyingly the nice local cinema is not showing Deadpool 2 but I think I might breach my self imposed ban on Vue this time to see the film.

I'm not sure what to think of Solo, I'm really not keen on the idea of it at all and it's getting lukewarm reviews. I thought Rogue One wasn't bad but ultimately it was spoilt by the fact we know exactly what's going to happen plus I wasn't too keen on their explanation for the exhaust tube vulnerability. When I first saw the cover art with the lead character in the TIE outfit I was excited thinking they were going to adapt TIE Fighter which takes place between a New Hope and Return of the Jedi and is focused on the development of the advanced TIE fighter. Darth Vader flies the prototype in the first film but then officially it's never seen or heard of since so the game filled that in showing the storyline of the Admiral in charge of the advanced TIEs who defects to the rebellion.

One of the limitations of the main films was that the rebels lack much in the way of capital ships and very little that could rival a Star Destroyer bar a few of the Mon Cal Star Cruisers however with an Imperial civil war that gave a great opportunity for spectacular battles as the Star Destroyers and all their fighters went head to head. With Last Jedi not being well received nor Solo I wonder what direction Disney will take it in although I can't see them wanting to rock the boat too much as they've mostly stayed far too safe with it.

John

We are outnumbered by enemy titans, recommend aggressive sustained counterfire